Week long update

March 14, Chris and I celebrated our 10th anniversary of dating by a dinner at Cilantro. It was so nice to get to eat an entire meal without cleaning food off the faces of my children, or the floor, or getting someone water, or ketchup or a napkin, etc. My mom watched the kids and they did great.
March 16 we had a family party for Rowan. It was super nice and almost the entire family was there from great grandma to second cousin, from great aunts to uncles. I had a lot of help for the food and of course forgot to take pictures of the delicious spread. It was a pasta theme, 3 types of pasta, I made mac n cheez, a traditional tomato sauce, and my sister in law made this awesome pesto of mint and pistachios. I absolutely love this pesto and so did everyone else. My mom made a salad, and my mother in law brought fresh bread. I made Rowan his own cake, but bought the other cake which ended up being a disappointment. I'd bought cakes from this restaurant before and they were great, but this one was dry and not that flavorful (other than the frosting). Oh well, it didn't matter as the birthday boy had a great day.
Now that Rowan is 1, he is getting more and more into Daddy. He cries when Chris leaves, and follows him around the house. Athena never did that, so it is so nice to see because he tried so hard with Athena but she just could not think of anyone but me until she was almost 3!
Rowan is starting to run now, he says NO (unfortunately I blame his sister for this one!), he is very vocal when he wants something and PERSISTENT. I know it is good, but sometimes I can't believe someone that small can have such strong opinions already. Other words he says consistently are bye, hi, ball, and dog. He loves dogs and cried yesterday when this giant bull dog left the park. He is a real charmer and smiles at almost everyone. He really makes people happy. He is demanding more and more food too. I've fed him just about everything now with the exception of nuts. I'm limiting his exposure to strawberries and citrus since he got a pretty bad diaper rash from a tangerine. He wants to feed himself now, which is messy but adorable. He kept whining for something at dinner last night and I finally figured out he wanted my fork. I got him one with rounded edges and he began to dip it in his bowl and feed himself. Chris and I were thoroughly impressed and tonight he repeated the same behavior even though the rest of us were eating with our hands!
Athena has been on Spring Break, she only goes to school 6 hours a week, but it still seems significant. She is just maturing and getting smarter by the day. She recently became interested in letters and now recognizes many of them and knows the sounds they make. She still says THE FUNNIEST THINGS. She is an awesome story teller, her teacher even mentioned this in our conference a few weeks back. She says things like, "When I gave birth to my baby", when she is pretending to me a mom. She has eagle ears and must listen to my mom friends and I talk more than I realize. She wants me to have 2 more babies, 1 boy and 1 girl. I told her she'd have to talk to her dad about that because he said no more babies and she said, "well, if we ask a different Dad then he might say yes." I thought that was really funny. I am really proud of Athena's growth this year when it comes to making friends and working things out with friends using her words. She used to be VERY aggressive and it was hard for me to deal with. Now, she rarely lashes out and is actually very good at problem solving with friends. She also used only play with her cousin, and now she actually will name off about 5 friends that she says are her best friends.
I've cooked a bunch lately, not too much exciting stuff. I tried the berry goodness muffins from ED&BV and everyone loved them. I didn't like them at first, but the next day I did.

I also made the sweet curry casserole and everyone including rowan gobbled it up. Chris and I had to add some serious spice to it, but as a basic throw everything in a casserole recipe it was great, and had some ingredients I wouldn't have thought of (like apples).
Here is a picture of a dinner that made everyone happy.
We had a busy day on Easter. We drove 45 minutes to my aunt's house out in the country, horses and all. Then we drove to my in laws house for more family fun. Athena and Rowan loved seeing all of their cousins again and hunting for eggs.
Egg hunt #1 at our house.



Egg hunt #2.
Egg hunt #3 (not pictured).